• Content
  • Knowledge about your field
  • General Awareness
  • General Aptitude (Analytical Ability, Thinking on the feet, et al)
• Examples from your work experience or training/education
  • Leadership examples
  • Situation of Crises and how effectively you handled them
  • Examples from leadership positions held at college or otherwise
  • Hobbies, Areas of Interests, books you read...
• Communication Skills
  • Clarity of thought
  • Articulation
  • Ability to hold a discussion
  • Body Language and Eye Contact

• To meet the candidate in person
• To assess the skills which cannot be tested otherwise, like in exam
  • People Skills
  • Leadership Insights from past experiences (work or non-work)
  • Negotiation Skills
  • Listening Skills and Articulation etc.

• To leverage the opportunity to market themselves (the school)
• To assess whether the applicant is likely to join the school if admitted (high yields is a critical parameter of international B-school rankings)

• Learn about the institute thoroughly - "Why ISB?", Know about:
  • History, Main strength, Established by... & Prominent Alumni
  • Which clubs you would like to join

• Be ready and thorough with your area of undergrad specialization (for applicants with less than 2 years of experience) or Industry trends and imperatives (for experienced professionals)
• Be thorough with the Hobbies and Interest part of your resume, e.g. for cricket enthusiasts a common question is: What makes the cricket ball reverse swing? Or other sports related questions such as:Why there are holes on golf ball etc.

• Regularly read a few prominent Magazine and/or Journals and develop your own perspective about current affairs and other issues of national / international relevance
• Add humor to your talk, ... learn a clean joke (but only if you are good at it!)
• Do not bluff, be honest (no ambiguity about this)
• Avoid slangs (guys, folks etc)
• Listen to the question completely before answering it
• Your responses should not last more than 1-2 minutes per question. Remember the attention span of an average listener is 30 - 60 seconds. Once in a while, take brief pauses (1 - 2 seconds) to let the panelists ask any questions that might have popped up based upon what you have said
• Be ready with a couple good questions to be asked at the end (V. IMP!). The first one should preferably be an open ended one
• It is advised that you form a group of 5-10 serious and sincere people and discuss regularly
• Engage in a perspective building discussion on a regular basis
• Use facts (statistics) and illustrations (examples, preferably from your experience), where you can
• Be Assertive (polite, firm and objective) but not Aggressive

• There is no substitute to practice (record, mock interviews) for preparation of interview

• Speak and think like an MBA (at least try to - it is all in the mind!). Use the right phrases during a discussion
• Have an in-depth knowledge about two industries other than your original industry

• To a large extent, your responses decide the direction of the interview (V. IMP!)
• Tell me something about yourself - Tell me something that is not in your resume...
• How do you differentiate yourself from a typical IT/ (or any other) candidate? 
  • Write about it so that you are comfortable speaking it for 4-5 mins - then condense to make an impact
  • What value would you add to the MBA class (inside class and outside)?

• How will an MBA from ISB help you? - this is the single most critical question that needs absolute clarity. (V. IMP!) You will be probed on this numerous times during the 30 minutes
• Career Roadmap - short to medium to long term horizon?
• Why this particular field - Marketing/Operation/Fin...
• Strengths and Weaknesses
• Failure at Work/College
• Success at Work/College
• A team working situation - leading the team....
• Extra-Curricular
  • Hobbies
  • Social Service
• What special aspects of your education or training have prepared you for this job?
• Your greatest achievements to date? Creative thing?

Get the comprehensive guidance on how to ace the ISB interview from ISB Alumni members, who have been on both sides of the table and who know what it takes to scale the summit

We offer three services to help candidates prepare for one of the most important components of their MBA application, the interview.

• Discussing candidate's background, profile, career plans and interests and getting the list of schools (limited to two) to which the candidate wants the interview preparation service.
• Discussing with the candidate, the most suitable answers to the likely questions to be asked in the interview of a  particular school, given the candidate's profile and career plans.
• Two Mock Interviews after the candidate is well prepared with the answers to the suggested questions.
• Detailed feedback on the interviews performance and suggested answers
• All discussions will be done either by emails or over the phone. Mock interviews will be over Phone or Skype /G-Talk /Yahoo Talk.
• Personal sessions possible if the candidate is in Delhi/Bangalore/Paris/Boston/London/Manchester.